Global City Blues

Rating:
Summary: Saying it like it is!
Review: I found this book to be so refreshing. Daniel Solomon is an architect and urban designer who writes eloquently and passionately about how cities get built and the huge forces to be overcome if we are to regain civility and harmony with our environment. His writing is funny and perceptive, taking to task the pretensions of Modernist dogma and the way our profession has been taught for the last fifty years. He writes about the need for 'background architecture' to repair the urban fabric and the idea of urbanism as a way of looking at our built environment.
There are some fascinating stories about his home city of San Francisco and the fight to pull down the ugly urban freeways built during the 60's.
The book is essential reading for urban designers and policy makers and all who care about cities and how they are built.

Rating:
Summary: a refreshing breeze of humanity in a nihilistic world
Review: Solomon's book was just the tonic I needed to regain my faith in the real value of the design professions. I had begun to despair that I was the only person who found the Prada posing of Rem Koolhaas and his ilk reminded me ever so much of the children's story "The Emperor's New Clothes." Solomon is apparently another like-minded soul, though his book touches on so much more than the soulless modernism that pervades the design professsion (esp. the academy and the press) today. A committed urbanist, Solomon attempts to show that a very few showoff buildings may have their place in a city, but that a city cannot be made of Frank Gehry monuments. And most especially not of imitation Frank Gehry monuments! He writes with wit, passion, and clarity, three qualities that are often in short supply in tomes by architects. Major kudos to the author, and a strong "buy" recommendation to the reader.

Rating:
Summary: a powerfully argued book
Review: This author really states with such power and imagery how screwed up the modern world is. He describes the 'odorless gas of Modernist thinking' that has affected the way we design, plan and build that is anti-human and incredibly destructive to civilized living.
Great stuff. I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Why urban design matters
Review: This is an interesting book about urban design. Mr Solomon explains how the way architecture and urban design have been taught has affected the built environment all over the world and why we need a new school of thought about making cities. The figures he describes as heroes are interesting.. Hopkins, Colin Rowe, some Chinese architect in Beijing, because they have resisted the forces of the media and current trends and have attempted something timeless. The book represents a personal journey by an architect who realizes there is something very wrong about the way our world is evolving but hasn't yet found the complete answer, only some clues as to another direction.
It is a pity there are not more illustrations.